Art Dubai 2018

21-24/03/2018

The Rooster Gallery, the third-time participant of the international art fair Art Dubai, presents a solo exhibition of the painter of the young generation Kristina Ališauskaitė, PotentialRealities, in the fair’s new programme Residents. Only eleven galleries have been invited to take part in this programme. The artist will spend a month before the fair in a residency in Abu Dhabi and will present works created specially for this stand. A large-size diptych exhibited in a non-traditional way will be in the centre of the exhibition. During the fair, the painter will lead a masterclass presenting her work methods and inviting the participants to try their hand at various art techniques and to create a fragment of a joint work.

The main theme of Ališauskaitė’s artistic pursuits is the multi-layered nature of reality. She explores the less tangible experiences – feelings, moods, dreams and subconscious images – that exist beyond the material reality. The artist is searching for their manifestations in daily life and highlights them. She draws our attention to the nuances of human existence that we hardly notice, and brings to the surface what we usually try to conceal. The painter discovers the gist of the matter in small and at first sight insignificant details. The motifs of her paintings are seemingly commonplace: human figures and their parts, portraits, daily objects, and fragments of interiors. However, these laconically simple images are very eloquent. Removed from daily life and its customary environment, each object becomes a symbol, and each movement acquires the weight of a ritual gesture.

Ališauskaitė’s approach to painting is personal and intuitive. She looks at the world from her own unique perspective and tries to experience it on her own, seeking to understand it and convey it to the viewers. Yet the painter finds it more important to make an impact on the viewers, provoke their emotional response and revive their memories rather than tell about herself. Thus her paintings are devoid of a consistent narrative and a well-developed story. The artist communicates through emotions rather than stories and theories, and creates suggestive visual metaphors referring to what is individual and alongside universal.

This emphasized all-pervasive symbolism and metaphorical character fills Ališauskaitė’s canvases with mystery, solemn tranquillity, and a kind of theatricality. In her works, the limits between life and stage, reality and fiction, rationality and irrationality, inside and outside get blurred. This constant struggle of the opposites is not lacking in drama, but it is subtle and concentrated, permeated with melancholy. Dark, almost monochromic colours of her canvases confirm the fact that in her work the artist gravitates towards the minor key. Yet upon a closer look, the darkness in her paintings unfolds into a variety of colours. Exactly in the same way, the entire range of emotions with which the painter’s works are charged is gradually revealed.